


Dresses and Kisses

by Angie13



Category: Clue (1985)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-18
Updated: 2014-10-18
Packaged: 2018-02-21 16:22:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2474654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Angie13/pseuds/Angie13
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if what you thought you knew about Mrs White and Yvette was about as truthful as everything else in the movie?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dresses and Kisses

**Author's Note:**

  * For [angharad_crewe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/angharad_crewe/gifts).



> Author’s Note: Ending C, much like the cake, is a lie. Sort of. Kind of. Mostly. Then again, so are the others. Take that as you will... And I hope you enjoy it!

If you asked Madeline Blackburn nee Grissom, a wedding was a necessary evil. However, no one ever asked her and so she kept such wise opinions to herself and simply got on with the thing. It was what one did. There was very little point in complaining about it all. Besides, having gone through the awful drudge four times already, Madeline felt herself to be an old hand at the ins and outs of a successful wedding. A fifth would be no harder than the previous ones.

It was the parts after the wedding that she still had to get a handle on, though.

*

"Maddie! Maddie, come look at this! I think I figured it out finally. This should work like, like... Like magic!"

Suppressing a sigh and a faintly tolerant smile at her husband’s use of the hated nickname, Madeline set down her book and rose to her feet from her favorite arm chair, smoothing her skirt with automatic precision. As she moved past the new maid working diligently at the tall shelves that surrounded the fireplace, she could not quite help the smile from transforming into something warmer. “Pardon me,” she murmured. “The genius calls.”

“Oui, madam.”

The return smile could only be described as sympathetic and Madeline hurried from the room, pale cheeks flushing warm. Why could she not remember hiring such a pretty young woman? Was it Arthur? Or the agency perhaps? She certainly was a step above the last hired help. Loretta was a capable, dear woman but she hardly turned the head.

Which, Madeline supposed, was usually what a good, proper housewife would want in a maid. Sturdy, dependable, homely as a door. Not pretty as a picture with legs obviously too long and chest too full beneath the plain gray uniform. Certainly nothing to distract the eye of her husband.

As if that would ever be a problem in the Blackburn household, she thought as she cast one final glance backwards over her shoulder at the busily working blonde. Never in a million years.

*

Two weeks later, Madeline once more found another reason to linger in the kitchen as Yvette completed all of the mysterious little post-dinner rituals. She hardly had the first clue about what the younger woman did and why but she could not resist watching as she bent over the sudsy sink with its dirty pans. Despite the masking grey fabric of her dress, her backside swayed rhythmically in response to her scrubbing actions. It was downright hypnotic. Madeline bit back a sigh and deliberately shifted her attention to the knob on the nearest cabinet. "So... Yvette, how are you finding your position here?"

The moment the question escaped into the space between them, Madeline flushed at the unwitting tone and implication. She turned her head a bit more as if inspecting another knob. “That is, I’m quite satisfied with your work and hope that you are…” She trailed off, further annoyed by her lack of coherence when alone with the maid. It made no sense. Though, on the other hand, it made perfect sense and Madeline knew that she had always preferred the softness of women to the harder lines of men. It was only that, well, it was not the sort of thing a nice lady talked about in a world where weddings always included a dress and a tuxedo, a mister and a missus.

Which was probably why the bits after the wedding were always the hardest and why she stood here, nearly six months after the dress had been packed into mothballs, wanting nothing more than to kiss the maid.

“Madam?” 

Madeline sighed, eyes closing, and shook her head to clear away the thoughts. When she felt cool, still-damp fingers over the pulse at the inside of her wrist, though, all breathing ceased and she froze. Two heartbeats passed and she eased her eyelids open a fraction. Yvette’s slight smile filled her consciousness immediately. “Y-yes? What is it?”

“You seem pale, madam. Are you feeling well?”

She looked down at Yvette’s hand, still at her wrist, fingers curving more definitely now. The other woman’s skin, a delicate porcelain rose, rested in contrast to her own ice-marble paleness. The longer the moment drew out, the more firmly she could feel her heart beating within her chest. The moisture left from the dishes faded and was replaced by increasing warmth. The moment hovered precious and intimate, far more delicate than anything shared with Dr. Blackburn. She flushed at the thought but still turned her hand beneath Yvette’s, shifting until they were palm to palm. When the maid did not move or object, Madeline allowed their fingers to lace together. It felt incredibly natural. She sighed again but the sound echoed through the quiet kitchen with a noticeable difference this time.

“I suppose I am,” she murmured. “I feel perfectly fine.” She lifted her head to meet Yvette’s warm gaze and the half-smile that made her own mouth turn up at the corners. Hesitantly, gently, she squeezed the captured hand. “How do you feel, Yvette?”

A long pause, almost too long, greeted the question and then the blonde tipped herself forward. Just before lips brushed lips, a whisper of “better in a moment, madam” ghosted between them. Then Madeline’s world condensed to just a kiss. Just that kiss and only that kiss.

*

Many more kisses followed. Secret little kisses and roaming hands in the laundry and the pantry and the kitchen, all of the places husbands never went. Each time felt like a new exploration to Madeline, a revelation and a challenge. While Yvette was careful to keep her eyes low and her work tidy and her words respectful when others were present, Madeline felt she could now read between the lines in the same manner that her distracted husband deciphered the unknowable numbers scratched all over the blackboard in his study. It brought a smile to her lips whenever she thought of it.

Even her husband noticed her improved temperament and nodded in a lordly, faux-gracious manner over dinner one night. “Have you found a new hobby, after all, Maddie?” he asked. “You didn’t come to my study when I called yesterday.”

“Oh, yes.” She smiled, tilted her head, and kept her eyes from Yvette as the maid set a plate of asparagus on the table. “I’m sorry. Did you call?”

He snorted and waved a hand dismissively before reaching out to pull various dishes to him, loading his plate with all manner of things without the slightest nod to portion control or even taste combination. She watched him for a moment. Then she lifted her own fork and began to eat her far more dainty meal. For some reason, he felt less irritating than her previous husbands. Bless him, lost in his own realm of intangibles until he forgot to even come to bed. Eight months past the dress, Dr. Blackburn had all of the earmarks of a tolerable roommate. If only she had found this man previously, life would have been so much more simple.

Of course, she also would have found Yvette sooner. Thinking this, Madeline cast a sideways look to the blonde. Yvette immediately met her eyes and smiled one of her little smiles, something that fell in between a smirk and a beam. It was charming. It was adorable.

She was hopelessly in love for the first time and it was amazing.

*

Even months later, standing beside the freshly turned earth and staring down into the dark hole dutifully, Madeline could hardly remember he was dead. Or was supposed to be dead. Who knew anymore? He had become such a secondary person in her world and it had only taken a year and a half of marriage. The real heart of the household had been her and Yvette with the strange man, like the black sheep of the family, puttering away in his study or at work in the lab. All day, every day. She and Yvette planned meals and chose fabric patterns and laughed over the Sunday funnies together while they shared the same mug of tea.

When he first took ill, she figured it for something he ate and put him to bed with soda water and crackers, stroking his forehead with a damp cloth and telling him to rest. She told him that he had been working too hard and deserved a rest. The world of science would not collapse if he missed a day. The government that allowed for ridiculous vacations and stipends to their congressmen could give a poor humble physicist a day or two in bed. Then she went to the kitchen where she and Yvette made homemade chicken soup - from stock to end. 

Yvette believed strongly in the healing powers of food. She held Madeline to her and kissed her cheek and told her all about it as they watched the liquid reduce.

As the sickness lingered, though, and he began to toss and turn and mutter things that she had a feeling she was never supposed to know, worry grew in the pit of her stomach. While she didn’t understand the first thing about quantum doohickeys and particle whatzits, she felt very positive that no one else should know about them either. At least not these particular ones that had occupied her husband for so long. Years before he even married her!

When she found him gone from his bed by the end of the week, well… What was a wife to do? She called the police and that proved to be quite possibly a worse plan than playing at marriage in the first place. But how often did husbands go missing and stay missing?

The answer was rarely (except when it came to her, sometimes). Within a few days, he had returned. In a manner of speaking, at least. Most of him had returned, sprawled out in the bed he had previously been tossing and turning in, with a distinct separation between mind and body.

Now she stood at the grave. She paid her respects and said goodbye over and over, loud enough to avoid hearing the silly words spoken by others. Jinx. Man-eater. Unnatural woman. Black widow. As if hurting him would ever cross her mind! He was mild and silly and ridiculous and wholly inoffensive, all things being equal. Optimistic and blinkered but sweet enough. Far more likable than her previous husbands.

She hoped that, wherever he was now, he was happy. After this was all properly over, she had plans of being happy herself. The house - and Yvette - waited for her.

*

No.

The word still rang in her ears days later and Madeline stared down at the way her hands tangled together atop her lap.

No. Such a final, surprising word and it sat like heavy lead in the pit of her stomach. Even the last, soft kiss did not ease the blow as Yvette walked from the house for the final time. It made it all worse, actually, because there was still truth in that kiss just like there had been truth in all of their kisses. No matter why Yvette had taken the position as maid in the Blackburn house or how she met the person she owed allegiance to or why she allowed the perfect fairy tale and its cloaking story to come tumbling down around her ears… Her kiss still tasted of love.

So there were lies beneath the beginning and lies throughout the middle and lies at the end. Yvette traded in secrets and slipped notes from the study and did whatever she had to do in service to her other master. Yet Madeline trusted in that kiss and what it said and would trust in it for as long as she could. A kiss like that said more than a “no” ever did.

*

After all this time, it amused her to think the feelings could return just like that proverbial bad penny. Bitter as a copper taste in the mouth but able to be traded for sweet sugary morsels at the Five and Dime. Others had chided her for a morbid sense of humor, a too dry wit. This, then, was more hangman’s humor and she was not bothered by it at all. 

She had gotten very good at playing new games in the end, in the long endless months after his death. Layered games that required only one party to know the rules. Madeline always knew the rules. Just as she had from the day of her first wedding. There were ways of doing things that were right and ways of doing things that you wanted and, if you were clever enough and quiet enough, you could make them mean almost the same thing.

She spoke of flames and she meant it but not in the way the others supposed. No, there were more ways to burn than with anger and sin and hatred. One could burn with passion and need and worse. Madeline Blackburn finally understood that and embraced it. If she was a Black Widow, then so be it. She would be the Black Widow and the Ice Queen. Only she and Yvette would know that the black was worn for a first love, killed by the cold reality of politics and espionage.

On the other hand… Madeline watched as Yvette paused on her way out through the study’s door and turned. Their eyes met and a little smile, that strangely perfect and familiar smile, appeared before the blonde’s lips moved in silent words. 

I love you.

Perhaps the flames were still there, after all. Madeline lowered her head to hide her growing smile. Perhaps the fire only slept. They both looked very lovely in black dresses, after all, and times… Well, they were changing.


End file.
